Behind the Words
by Aurora Musis Amica
Summary: There's a scar on his back she doesn't remember. Reunited after the Citadel coup, Shepard reflects on the time Kaidan has been away from her, and the life he's had - without her.


There's a scar on his back she doesn't remember.

He's sprawled face-down beneath her, comfortably trapped between her and her bed, the gorgeous expanse of his shoulders hot under her fingertips. The first yearnings have been well-sated, and now she's taking her time to explore him properly, reading the two years she missed in his skin and muscles.

For someone with a recent near-death experience, Kaidan is in excellent health. Looking at his neck, his shoulders and running her hand through his hair, scraping the scalp at the back of his head, it takes knowing what to look for to see the signs of injuries that have been well cared for.

So the scar on his back, left of the spine, below his heart but still far, far too close, is an anomaly, an irregularity that shouldn't exist. Shepard knows a knife wound when she sees one. It's neat and well-healed, but not neat enough. Patched up, but not cared for. Any half-competent physician could do a better skin restoration job. So why hasn't one, she wonders? Kaidan's streak of vanity gives way to his chosen life when they collide, but he treats his body like all his equipment, keeping it in top shape through meticulous maintenance. He wouldn't have left a wound like this to chance.

And yet, there it is.

She knows he can feel her fingertips examining the spot with lightly stroked circles. His breathing is deep and calm, easily displacing her weight with every drawn breath, yet she thinks, senses, a hitch in the rhythm. She tries to make the touch lazy; no rush, no worry, nothing to tip him off to how focused she is. But the _need_ to know has kindled urgently, and it's impossible to ignore.

Feeding every bit of control of her voice into making it seem like a casual query, she asks "Where's this from?" Soldiers have scars, after all. No big deal, just something that caught her eye at random. A small part of her hopes he doesn't remember. That the incident, whatever it was, has long since faded beneath his notice, an unimportant moment in a rich and fully lived life.

He breathes a sigh. His voice rasps like it's been overgrown by vines in the few minutes since he used it last. "Got stabbed."

_I knew that,_ she thinks but doesn't say. Don't rush, don't force it. "Sounds like a story," she fishes instead, nudging him with her lips on his shoulder, then the lobe of his ear.

"Not really," he says, the tone of finality mild, yet there under the surface.

She can make some educated guesses. Their hardsuits are near-impervious to something as simple as a knife, and the place on his back even more so, guarded behind a power plant so well-protected it could take a shotgun point blank without shields and keep on working.

So he hadn't been in his hardsuit, which meant it likely hadn't happened in the line of duty. Or if it had, somewhere, sometime where he hadn't expected violence. Either way, he's a trained marine biotic with decent reflexes and a knack for reading a situation. It had to have been a surprise attack, one he hadn't seen coming.

A knife in the back is betrayal in its purest form. His trust is a precious gift, and so is his life, each breath he takes under her touch. She counts her own breaths down from ten, syncing them to his.

"Tell me anyway?" she suggests, and it's a struggle now to sound merely curious.

Kaidan's response is a non-committal noise from his throat, simple yet eloquently telling her that her casual act isn't holding.

But it's not a no. She can ask again, and she has to. It's vicious, the thought that's hit her. How close someone had come to depriving her of his warmth and care, forever. How easily he could have lost his only life as she laid dead on a Cerberus table, and she would have returned from the void only to find she'd missed him mid-transit.

Kaidan shifts beneath her, maybe sensing her dark thoughts. His free hand, not trapped somewhere under her, finds the edge of the duvet and awkwardly drags it up until they're both mostly covered, hiding the scar from her view, but not her fingers. The heat rises immediately, soaking slowly into her body and mind, leaving her cozy and comfortable right in a place where she wants to be.

But it doesn't quite reach the icy bits in her heart.

"What happened?"

He breathes himself into a more awake state, shrugging off the relaxation like slipping into a suit of seriousness. Her comfortable rock rumbles beneath her and rises so he can crane his neck to glance at her over his shoulder. Then he turns over slowly, rolling neatly without dislodging her more than necessary, until she can resume draping over his chest. She's pretty sure they're going to need a time-out to untangle the sheets wrapped around them. But later.

Face to face, gentle dark eyes and a comforting finger caress her cheek. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"You won't," she swears, entirely uncertain that she can back it up, but easily faking it.

He tilts his head, reading her as she's reading him, and she suspects his Shepard dictionary has some new entries today. "Sure? You don't like it when I talk about things that happened while you weren't here."

"I'm not _that_ bad," she objects, but the quirk on his lips says exactly how little weight he gives her protest. He's not wrong, she has to admit.

"Yes, you are. Remember the interrogation at Huerta?" He sounds amused and he backs it up with a smile, but there's an undercurrent of seriousness. Sitting at his hospital bed and catching up on everything and nothing, she'd finally given in to curiosity and demanded to know about the _doctor_ he'd seen at the urgings of his friends.

She knows her jealousy is unreasonable. And yet, she's grateful for his natural reticence that's left his skin untouched by a lover for two years. He's hers, and hers alone.

"I'm sorry?" she tries, but the words don't quite fit.

He doesn't reply, but humms and catches her hand, bringing her fingers to his lips for feathery kisses that spell forgiveness for the words she can't make true. Not loving him is impossible in that moment.

The thought of not having him, unbearable.

"Please?" It's the word that will get her answers, paid with the currency of tomorrow's trust. He doesn't want to be pushed, and she's pushing.

The kisses end. He rests his head back on the pillow, gazing up at the open skylight in the ceiling. She watches him, but he's not obvious about his thoughts, wherever they're going.

"It was a... a bad day," he begins. It's simple words that belie the effort and decision behind them. "I was home in Vancouver, waiting for reassignment. Just got back after a... hm. A bad mission." He pauses, rearranging his words. She hopes it's not to figure out what to censor, but she suspects that's what he's doing.

"Horizon?" she hazards.

"No."

She worries that her erroneous assumption of her guilt has rocked him out of his retelling, but she can see the thoughtful look as he does the equation in his head, whether or not to elaborate. Whether or not to provide her with another puzzle-piece of his missing life. She makes a mental note to read up on his service record, to fill in the blanks for the time they were supposed to have together. She already knows his pre-_Normandy_ record by heart.

"There was a monsoon out on Mindoir," he says, apparently deciding in favour of elaborating. "They called for help when it turned out bigger than they could handle, but the call was a few days too late to do much good."

She hasn't heard about that but she's seen her fair share of disaster areas, and from his voice it's a rough memory. Biotics are invaluable when it comes to getting people out of bad places. But that assumes they are still alive when the help arrives.

"It's not your fault," she consoles.

His thoughtful look breaks and he tilts his head down from watching space to raise an eyebrow at her. "I know that," he says and playfully jostles her, as if the idea that he'd feel responsible for something outside his control is silly. It does make her smile, as much out of relief for something that doesn't need fixing.

"Good," she praises unnecessarily, and gets a tap on her nose for it before Kaidan rests back and sombers again.

"So I was having a bad day," he continues, the understatement plain to her. "A bad night, actually. Couldn't sleep, so I decided to walk it off. Vancouver is nice at night." He spends a moment in the memory, then pauses, considers. "I wasn't watching where I was going. Almost walked right into two guys, teenagers, really. One of them pulled a knife and decided he wanted me to give him some credits." There's distance as he talks, just like giving her a report from long ago. But then he sighs, and frowns.

"If I'd had a good day, I would've tried talking them down, or disabled them without making a big deal out of it."

She's seen him. His ability to use precise force in carefully measured amounts is as impressive as his ability to cut loose and wreak havoc. "But?" She braces for the bad part, though Kaidan doesn't seem distressed.

"But I was having a bad day. So I told them off. Told them to go home and stop pretending to be tough." He chuckles without humour. "They didn't take it well."

"They shouldn't have messed with someone like you." She wouldn't have. A lesson learned early, the people who didn't get scared when they should were the ones to watch out for. Foolhardy, sometimes. But better trained, stronger, and armed, other times.

Kaidan humms in agreement. "If it had been just the two of them, I don't think they would have. But there were three. I didn't notice." He says it without self-recrimination, his mind as healed as the scar.

"I'm glad you're okay," she says fully honestly, clamping down the stray thought that wants to tell him he should have been more careful. It doesn't belong.

"That's one of the funny things about biotics," he muses, maybe picking up on her unstated question of _how_. "Some can't concentrate at all when they're hurt, it's an effective way to shut them down. But some are like me, we just get stronger. Pain, anger, fear. It's pure fuel."

"Did you hurt them?" she whispers. In his place she might have, but he is a far better person even on a bad day.

His hand strokes her head, running his fingers into her hair as if trying to soothe away the thought. "Just their pride. Then I sat my ass down and called the police."

She can't quite help the chuckle that escapes her, or the effect of his hand's calming touch, quelling her anger that wishes to burn on his behalf before it can kindle.

He's doing it on purpose.

The knowing helps. A concrete event, rather than her own fear's conjured scenarios. That it is a stupid, meaningless encounter, the worst possible way to die... that gnaws. She'd come so close to losing him, over some credits. Asking what happened to the thugs is pointless. Vancouver is ashes beneath the Reapers' feet.

_So close._

"You okay?" he asks, preciously.

She forces an exhale to release the tension he's reading in her, then draws a breath through her nose, counting slowly. His heavy hand encourages her head close against his chest, and she listens to his heartbeat, strong and steady as a metronome. She draws a lazy circle on his skin, starting from the point under his heart.

"Promise me something?"

"Hm?" He's curious, but just a shade of watchful that tells her she's still okay in his book but her tab is running high. She wants to tell him to run mission control from CIC during the combat drop tomorrow, but it's a selfish thought; he won't agree easily, and she doesn't want to give him reason to doubt in the trust he's shown.

She pushes herself up on her arms and kisses her way up his chest, over the handsome jaw with a fresh growth of stubble, and finds his lips, nipping his lower one. It earns her a playful scowl that finally starts melting her heart.

"Watch your back, Alenko," she purrs, "I'm the only one who gets to put marks on you."

It has the desired effect. He chuckles and wraps his arms around her, warm and vibrantly alive. "I promise, you have full monopoly."

_Damn right I do._


End file.
